Sic Transit Gloria Mundis
by Guardian and Piett
Summary: Aeris Gainsborough rises from the dead to find herself in the arms of a blonde spikey-haired warrior. But can she survive in a world vastly changed from when she left it?


**Sic Transit Gloria Mundis**   
**_________________**

**Prologue**   
**_________________**

The dream had returned, and the sleeper tossed and turned with its urgency. 

_A forgotten city....___

_Buildings of shell and bone, ringed by the chalk white remains of great beasts, a_   
_landscape that should have existed far beneath the sea but didn't...___

_A city so old it contained the death of time and rock._

The dreams had increased in frequency these past weeks. 

_Strange columns intertwined with kelp that grew on without the salt waves around_   
_them...___

_A shining altar, surrounded by a vast blue pool, blue like a child's imagination, bluer_   
_than the sky, the light off the faintly glowing walls dissolved in the rippling waters...._

The dreams had become a liability; an unwelcome distraction in a time when he could   
ill afford to let his focus waver. Yet he could not ignore them, and the pull to the   
north had become almost irresistible. A bird's migration. A fool's folly. And he had   
never been a fool. 

Yet... 

_A young woman, back toward him, long chestnut hair drawn in silky tendrils with her_   
_hands up against the glowing altar... praying, for something... he didn't know what.___

_And then a voice, barely a whisper, but desperation in it's dreaming depths...___

_"Help me..."___

He awoke with a start, sheets and pillow drenched with acrid sweat. Heavy-lidded   
eyes caught a glimpse of the time - 4 o'clock, still a while before dawn. Damn if he   
wasn't getting any sleep any more. 

Pulling himself up and out of bed, he fumbled for the light switch, which gave way   
beneath his fingers with a plastic lurch. The light flickered dismally over the messy   
room - clothing, weapons and equipment were scattered about the floor with random   
carelessness. He'd long since given up trying to find any sort of permanence where   
he lived, not since the troubles began. Sighing, he lurched sleepily to the corner and   
began to pack up. 

It was scarcely an hour later when he emerged from the small apartment. He was   
used to travelling in the dark, his profile garnering him attention he could ill afford.   
Disguise had seldom worked, so he had given it up to the safety darkness offered him. 

He'd picked an apartment not far from the local chocobo stables, in case he had to   
make a quick getaway. A quick grin crossed his face. It was odd to be leaving a   
place in such a pedestrian manner. He'd normally have been shot at twice, at least,   
by this time, by some sharp-eyed sniper at the wall. 

The sun was not far from the horizon when he reached Blackie. It hadn't been a very   
original name for a black chocobo, he realised. In fact, it was quite possibly the worst   
name for a chocobo that had ever existed, but ever since the last one had been shot   
out from beneath him, he'd stopped caring. 

He paused a moment beside the dark-feathered bird, gathering his thoughts. Idly, he   
ran his fingers over the hilt of his enormous weapon. It was a sword - though a few   
had called it a '#&$^%ing gigantic razorblade' - and despite the fact that the name   
'C. Strife' had been since carved into the top of the hilt, he still couldn't shake off the   
knowledge that it wasn't truly his. No, it had belonged to a much greater and more   
deserving warrior than he, and all he could do was carry it around in tribute; a true   
SOLDIER, not this blonde wannabe who had to creep from place to place in the dark. 

Shaking his head to banish those thoughts, he ran a tired hand through the spikes of   
his blonde hair. The past was the past, and he could do nothing but look toward the   
future. Strapping the giant blade to his back, he threw his leg over the Chocobo and   
began his slow journey north - toward Icicle, and toward the the shadow who   
haunted his dreams with it's cries.   
_________________ 

_Flower girl..._

Existence itself seemed to ripple; tremors in her emerald world. 

She could not feel herself - everything seemed fuzzy and unreal, like she wasn't really   
there. Like a dream that she could only watch. 

_It stirs..._

The world of perpetual emerald was changing now. She could feel again; waves of   
ice and fire that swept over her consciousness. She could **feel** again. 

Images washed over her, too fast to make sense. A blonde man, with aquamarine   
eyes and an enormous sword. _Cloud!_ Others... a red-scarred firebeast and a tall man   
in black with bloody eyes. _Vincent. Red XIII._ The dystopian towers of Midgar with its   
perpetual darkness. Cloud again, sword held aloft, ready to strike... strike _her_. The   
pain erupting in her chest as her life spilled out on a glossy marble floor... 

An unholy scream. 

_I need you... wake..._

Tifa's burgundy eyes. A man with spiky black hair and piercing eyes... Zack? 

_Aeris..._

Her green world split open and blue pain flooded back in, thick and nauseating. She   
struggled against the force trying to crush her, invading her nose and mouth and   
lungs in a rush of icy coldness; her limbs flailed wildly, like a grotesque puppet caught   
in a drowning net of icewater. Desperately, she raised her head to the light and tried   
to reach out toward it...   
_________________ 

The blonde-haired warrior had seemingly entered the world of the dead. 

The air had become unnaturally warm for this far north, his breath no longer spilling   
out in a fine mist of clouds against his mouth. But he scarcely gave it thought - his   
mind was dominated by the truly bizarre vista that lay before him. 

It was as if the ancient sea floor itself had risen to the surface. If he closed his eyes   
and breathed, he could faintly believe he could smell the death of salt water. Conical   
shells, gleaming a sickly off-white colour, jutted out of the ground. They seemed   
arranged, somehow - as if they were the work of some unseen designer, rather than   
an unordered landscape feature. Still, they paled in comparison to some of the other   
sights around him... 

Enormous skeletons. Huge vertebrae, creating strange pathways and routes across   
the uneven surface. Jagged bones creating strange stairwells and ladders. He'd   
thought it wood, at first, bleached white by the sun, but the perfect symmetry and   
smoothness of them was all cold bone. Too neatly ordered to be random;   
like the garden of some sick creator. 

_Help..._

The voice cut into his head like a knife, loud and piercing, and he clutched his head in   
pain although nothing had emanated from his ears. It cleared quickly, however, and   
his eyes were drawn to the middle of a set of three cone-shaped houses that dotted   
part of the ground. 

That voice... he was needed there. Wariness and even conscious thought were   
pushed beneath a layer of sheer urgency and before he could even breathe he was   
running into the nearest dark opening he could find. 

He gave the strange interior of the house no thought. It didn't matter. Nothing   
mattered. All that mattered was the voice, he had to get there! Where he knew and   
didn't know both at the same time, but questioning was long since over. 

Down a strange ladder, into a cavernous hall that could have fit an army. Had he   
been thinking, he'd have realised he knew this place. He had been here before,   
hadn't he? 

The structures here were definitely created by someone, glowing luminescent to   
counteract the pervasive gloom of the buildings. Somebody had once lived here;   
somebody had carved the walls and smoothed the floor and made the shining altar   
with step-like pillars all around. He followed them as they descended, jumping easily   
from stair to crude stair. 

And at the end of them was where he finally saw it. 

Impossibly blue water. A shape he'd thought was a fish before a hand broke surface,   
pale and flailing and human - and most likely drowning. The thrashings of the shape   
were getting limp and tired, and the beating of his heart inside his head was so loud it   
could have filled the cavern. _This _was what he had been running to; this was the   
voice. He had been made for this moment. 

The sword on his back clattered to the ground unheeded and he dived into the water   
without even thinking. It was cold, bitterly so, and he had to fight against the thick   
water in his efforts to get nearer the sinking person. They weren't far away now -   
_one more push forward, then _- brown locks of hair spilling over his shoulders like   
trailing vines as he grabbed an arm, not even pausing to look as he turned back   
toward the sandy edge of the pool. 

Her placed her - it was definitely a her, he had always known it had been a her - out   
of the water, gently on her side, as she spluttered and coughed out a mouthful of   
blue. The long brown hair that had hampered him so before was in tangled streaks on   
the sand, contrasting against pale skin that was clammy in the chill. The dress she   
had worn might have once been pink, and as she finally opened her eyes, he noticed   
that they were the colour of emeralds... 

So absorbed in staring at her was he that he failed to notice she had stopped   
coughing and had started doing likewise. Her beautiful long-lashed eyes went through   
a myriad of emotions; surprise, shock, and then impossibly - recognition. 

He was snapped out of his trance only when her blue-tinged lips began to move, and   
a melodious voice escaped her lips. It was slightly rough and strained, as if she had   
not used it for eons. 

"C... Cloud?"   
_________________ 

The light was getting closer, warmer. Strong hands were pulling her, even as she   
struggled to breathe in something other than the choking blue that was beginning to   
chill the back of her throat. 

Her head broke the surface of the water and she began to gasp, gulping in huge   
lungfuls of precious air, sweeter than anything she had ever tasted. She fell back,   
finally succumbing to the ache and pain in her lungs, trying to choke out everything   
on the gritty sand beneath her. 

It was a while before she was able to open her eyes. She'd stopped coughing now,   
her mind at once both sleepy and frantic, trying to clear the fog around her memories.   
She strained her eyes against the light of the cavern, so different to the dark she'd   
known, searching for something to gaze on - and was rewarded when a face swam   
into focus. 

His face was pale, his cheeks red from exertion, clothes sticking to his body from the   
water he had pulled her out of. Atop his head was an unruly crown of golden spikes,   
jutting out haphazardly. His features were sharp, though he had high delicate   
cheekbones, mouth drawn in a tight line of curiousness. And his eyes... 

She'd seen those eyes before. They were the colour of deep red wine, rich and dark,   
and her brain searched for a name to put to those eyes. But the eyes had an equally   
familiar and yet alien glow about them, rich blue flecks shining out from the red as if   
they were precious stones; mako blue, her brain told her as it broke awareness.   
Mako. They had the mako glow she had grown so familiar with, but it was strangely   
different, patterned there amongst the velvet red. But there was no mistaking it, and   
her memories rallied as she opened her mouth, lips parted in a bewildered smile. 

"C.....Cloud?"   
_________________ 

_Your name was Cloud..._

... I came crashing down?__

_Tall blonde cornfield hair aqua eyes you could drown in not for colour but for glassy_   
_depth of the brain - roughsmooth angelic voice tinged with Nibelheim accent that_   
_came out when you got enthusiastic about something anything me fighting long_   
_sharp steelfine sword fought like something possessed and made my eyes hurt with_   
_your grace..._

_Memory moves like a fish in water, darting here, there, touching on things random_   
_and beautiful - soft petals of flowers brushing as they passed from hand to hand -___

_I've been waiting so long, but only five minutes of sweet mortal time, time, time -___

_Does time have no meaning, then?___

_Torn brain, split-hurt, wavering blur of memories I'm sure it's him but angel voice_   
_has gotten deeper, eyes are bloodied red, face I'm not sure too soft where once_   
_was angular glass-sharp cut, hair perhaps ashen gold instead of harvest, but, but,_   
_it's him___

_it has to be him___

_who else would come for me?___

_falls on his knees in front of me, hands trembling like a little child's, lips parted with_   
_his eyes filled with wonder as he looks up at me and says (I've been waiting so **long**) -_

"..Holy Aerith?!"   
_________________ 

He could do no more than gasp her name as she looked up at him, piercing green   
eyes boring into him, filled with longing and hope and joy. He stumbled backward   
awkwardly, unsure of whether to run away or fall to his knees in reverence, as a part   
of him screamed he should. He felt like a child again, stumbling, clumsy. 

How could he have been so blind? So ignorant? To have trudged all the way to this   
godforsaken place with her in his dreams, in his nightmares, haunting his every waking   
moment, but not realised who she was? 

The Holy Aerith. Saviour of the planet. 

His reaction had not gone unnoticed by the Holy One. Her eyes clouded, the joy and   
hope fast being taken over by traces of pain and confusion. That jolted him into   
action, and he immediately threw his face toward the ground in supplication. His mind   
raced for the right words. 

"Uh... I greet you, Holy Aerith, our, ah, Saviour!"__

_If I ever use the word 'greet' in cold blood in casual conversation ever again, I_   
_should shoot myself._

Face down, he heard her rise slowly, and groggily walk over to where he had   
prostrated himself. Heard her laboured breath, then finally felt a soft hand settle on   
his cheek and pull his face upward. 

Cirrus Lockheart-Strife had never contemplated what looking into the face of a god   
would be like. Yet he looked now, his eyes finally gazing closely on Her face. He let   
out a choked breath at the beautiful face that gazed back at him. 

She stared at him for several moments, recognition, shock and then pain flashing   
across her eyes. A tear escaped from those green orbs, joining the rivulets of water   
slowly coursing down her face. 

"You're - you're not him. I thought you were; you look so like Cloud..." Aeris faltered.   
She felt drowned in an unfriendly sea without anything to buoy her to the top. "Um,   
and you don't have to go down on your knees," she added. 

"Cloud?" His brain raced and he flushed slightly, giving a nervous chuckle. "Um, I'm   
told there's a - family resemblance, ma'am, um, your Holiness, but - " 

"Cloud? Family resemblance?" Her face lit up. "You're his _son_?" 

"Add a few greats on to that, your Holiness. Three, to be exact." 

She froze like a rabbit, staring at him in wild disbelief. _Great-great-great_ grandson?!   
"But then - where's - " 

Her voice was drowned out abruptly by a low rumbling, one that grew steadily deeper   
until Cirrus could feel the ground beneath him begin to shudder. Bits of stone and   
plaster began to land next to him and turbulently stirred up the now-angry waters,   
and they both gave a horrified upward glance. 

The roof was collapsing. 

__________________ 

**A/N:** Piett: And so it begins. 

Guardian: Yet Another Aeris Resurrection 'Fic - but this time, with 98%   
less fat. And then we can all have a sausage party in the Rebuilt City   
Of Midgar! 

Piett: Yes. Hail, Jason and Kimberly! 

[/injoke] 

Thus begins the first part of what will hopefully be a very long (6-8+   
chapters) epic. Fear not, you won't be plagued with hordes of original   
characters, we're trying to keep this as much to the core FF crew as we   
can possibly manage when most of them are dead :P. 

Guardian: That will not, we guarantee, bore you to tears. Or be like   
every other Aeris Resurrection Fic in eternity. 

Piett: So be good little FF.net patrons and review! Oh, and those   
with serious shipping Jihads best keep your "X/X sucks!" comments to   
yourself, the shippers handbook goes out the window here. Stay tuned! 


End file.
